While any “regular” job requires you to be at work to make money, affiliate marketing offers you the ability to make money while you sleep. By investing an initial amount of time into a campaign, you will see continuous returns on that time as consumers purchase the product over the following days and weeks. You receive money for your work long after you’ve finished it. Even when you’re not in front of your computer, your marketing skills will be earning you a steady flow of income.

The Spin Sucks blog covers digital marketing and PR from a perspective of keeping marketing ethical—steering marketers away from the “spin doctor” label. The blog doesn’t stick exclusively to digital marketing topics, but gets into networking tips and productivity advice alongside posts on SEO and UX. Basically, if it’s valuable to marketers then it’s fair game for the Spin Sucks blog.
Learn how to analyze data — Know how to use marketing tools and analyze performance data. Do the math to determine your marketing costs in order to bring traffic to your site, and calculate conversions and commissions to determine what’s performing best for you. Tweak copy or the location of a CTA to optimize success of the page. Study success for all of your highest performing pages, and try to lift conversions. A performance increase of just a couple of points could mean a big lift in sales.
Connect with your readers on a regular basis. Choose 10 random email subscribers each month and request a meeting with them. Interview them and learn their pain points. The further you dive into your niche and understand the problems you’re solving, the more successful your content will be, and the more money you will make with affiliate marketing.

Sharpe says that you shouldn't dive into internet marketing until you decide on a niche and figure out what you're passionate about. Do you want to join the make-money-online (MMO) niche? Or do you want to engage in another niche? For example, you could sell products or online courses about blogging or search engine optimization or anything else for that matter. Keep in mind that whatever you're selling, whatever niche you're in, that you need to embed yourself there deeply.

Keeping up with the latest trends is a must for any business, but ignoring technology trends in the digital world is the matter of staying in business. Unfortunately, those trends (while easy enough to find mentioned online) are rarely explained well. There seems to be this mistaken idea that anyone who has an interest or need in the practice will just magically get the jargon. As we all know, that… [Read More…]
Totally agree with your opinion on affiliate marketing. I’m in the same space myself and can tell you what it feels like to earn $1000 commissions while literally sitting on the sofa watching TV. It is absolutely mind-blowing. High-ticket commissions are what sets apart the affiliate marketers that scale their business up to six or even seven figures to the ones that only make a few thousand a month. I run a website based on digital marketing an entrepreneurship. You should check out our affiliate program – it is guaranteed to blow your mind. 🙂
Does your site contain all the basics? Hours, phone number and address… all pertinent contact information. Is it easy to navigate? Allow secure purchases? Is it secure – do you see HTTPS:// in the address bar? For the tourist industry, does it allow a secure purchase of gift certificates? Invite comments or reviews? (You can learn a lot from a contact us page.) If you are a restaurant, do you have your menus, special events, directions, banquet menus online? Do you visually sell the restaurant? Allow online sign up for email specials? What about takeout menus? An email sign up would be perfect for this if it is a big part of your business. Does the site list a dress code? How to make a reservation? And don’t forget added benefits for you: links to other area businesses, employment opportunities, printable employment applications. Good Internet marketing will impress your market audience and provide you with a website that does more than look pretty.
Engage your potential customers with web design that is up to date and exciting. Use cool features like parallax scrolling and make sure the user experience is on point. If your website looks clean and is easy to navigate, you will be able to build trust with potential customers. If customers land on your site and don’t understand how to navigate or can’t find what they’re looking for, you have just lost a sale.
Make mutual connections with other bloggers by reaching out and engaging with them on social media, email, or face-to-face communication if possible. Share or comment on their social posts. Leave comments on their blogs. The key is to provide value! If you can, help with link building, guest posts contributions, door social shares. If you can show that you're a valuable resource, they may help you in the future.
Provide the most accurate information about the products you promote. Never exaggerate to quickly make a sale. Your audience will see through it and they will turn their backs on you. Instead, if the product you are promoting isn’t perfect, say so! It never hurts to explain the downsides to a product because this just proves to your audience that you are being completely honest with them. Also–this is very important–be transparent about your relationship with the merchant! It is legally required that you disclose your affiliate relationship, so any time you share an affiliate link you need to let your audience know. Make sure you are following the latest FTC guidelines here.
While affiliate networks (like Shareasale) are suited rather for affiliates with no particular strategy, I’d suggest you choosing SaaS affiliate programs (software as a service) if you want to work independently on a large scale. SaaS affiliate programs are usually much higher paying, due to the value of software they offer. While it may take a bit more effort to find a customer for B2B-oriented software, revenues from closed deals are incomparable. What’s even more enticing, some of SaaS affiliate programs sell monthly recurring licenses and - therefore - offer fixed recurring commissions!
When promoting affiliate offers, just make sure you are fully aware of all the terms and conditions attached to your affiliate program. Some programs can be strict about how they allow you to promote their products. For example, some may limit you to banner ads and links only, while others will allow you to use paid advertising, but won't allow email marketing.
Mobile has transformed the way people browse the Web. Even Google has now made mobile #1 in its indexing. If your site still isn’t friendly to mobile users, odds are good your brand is quickly vanishing from the Web – at least where the Big G is concerned. It’s time to take a close look at your design and make sure your site renders beautifully when viewed on Android, iPhone, and the rest.
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